David Goggins & Elon Musk's Performance Secrets - Polina Pompliano | Modern Wisdom Podcast 298

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   When Elon Musk looks…

   1. PPPolina Pompliano0:00

      When Elon Musk looks at people, he actually sees computers. He looks at you and he's like, "Wow, Kris. Like, look, you have the hardware that you were born with, which is your brain and the genes you got from your parents. But then there's also the software, the stuff that you consume on a daily basis, the content that you consume, the things that you learn that constantly upgrade your hardware. So what software are you installing in your mind on a daily basis?" And, and the way I think about it is like an iPhone. Like, are you operating at the latest iPhone update or are you still on like iOS 4? People like Elon are constantly upgrading that hardware. He sees the brain as a tool that's malleable, not something that's fixed and you're born with.

   2. CWChris Williamson0:47

      So you, you do The Profile, where you write a, a dossier about some of the most interesting people on Earth. Was there anyone that comes to mind as a person who you didn't really know if you were going to like them, and then after profiling them you ended up becoming a fan?

   3. PPPolina Pompliano1:03

      Ooh, that's interesting. Okay. So one that I wasn't really sure about was David Goggins, who, um, is this ultra-athlete. Uh, he went through BUD/S training, uh, for Navy SEALs, like, uh, several different times. And when I first came across his story, I was like, "I don't know. This guy just seems like very, you know, all in, aggressive, uh, very, uh, like a, like a man's man." I was like, "I'm not sure that I'll learn a lot from an ultra-athlete." Um, at the time I was training for a marathon when I first came across his story, so I was like, "Oh, maybe I'll learn something about, like, his, his, uh, regimen, his routine." But what I ended up finding out, that actually David Goggins is one of the most interesting people to me, because it's not just about physical, the, the physicality for him. It's very, very mental, and the fact that it took him so long to get in the right mindset to be able to do the things that he has done it's absolutely incredible, and I think he's a very, very good example of what somebody who's mentally resilient, uh, is. He, uh, you know, he used to... He's faced everything from racism to physical abuse to emotional abuse at the hands of his parents, at the hands of his classmates. Um, he had a very, very difficult childhood, and then he used these, like, mental techniques to get more mentally tough and to be able to do these, like, physical challenges that he, um, imposed on himself.

   4. CWChris Williamson2:36

      What are some of the techniques that he uses?

   5. PPPolina Pompliano2:39

      One of them is, he calls it the accountability mirror. So when he weighed like 300 pounds, he was, uh, he worked as a... He was spraying for cockroaches. He, um, came home one night with this, like, massive Steak 'n Shake shake from Steak 'n Shake, uh, and he sat down to watch TV, 'cause that's what he did every single day. And he came across this documentary on Navy SEALs, and that's kind of what piqued his interest to start getting in shape and turning his life around. But the accountability mirror basically was he posted sticky notes all over his mirror that told him, "Okay, for the next day, you're not gonna lie to anybody, uh, in order to protect your own feelings or their feelings," or whatever, because we all do that, right? Like, we lie every single day. He wanted to stop lying to himself and others, so that was a goal. He set these like... And, and another goal was, be able to run one mile. And, and those are, those are super, super specific things, because when you look in the mirror, the only person you cannot lie to is yourself. So he, it sounds really harsh, but, uh, he looked in the mirror the first day and he said... He looked at his reflection and he was like, "You're fat, you're lazy, you're unhealthy, you're stupid." All the things that he believed about himself, and those sticky notes were his, um, kind of the, the steps he took to change that narrative, so when he looked in the mirror he was proud of what he was seeing.

   6. CWChris Williamson4:08

      What would you ask Goggins if you got to talk to him?

   7. PPPolina Pompliano4:13

      So many things. (laughs)

   8. CWChris Williamson4:14

      Well, what were some of the things that you felt were missing? Like, let's say that you're really trying to dig deep and get into the source code of him. What couldn't you find on the internet that you need to know?

   9. PPPolina Pompliano4:23

      Yep. Uh, about his, uh, personal life, how he deals with relationships. I know he's engaged, but I know nothing about, uh, that journey. He, he, he very much... Uh, if you read it, he kind of almost sounds like selfish in the sense of, "I'm gonna improve myself to be the best person I can be," but you rarely see a glimpse of his, uh, personal/relationship status. Um, and I think that's on purpose. I think he wants to keep that, you know, uh, part of his life private. But I would be very curious. I, I'm actually very curious about that with a lot of people, because I think it's, it's easy to look at them and say, "Wow, look at all that they've accomplished," but like what have they sacrificed in the process? Um, I know he's been divorced, uh, previously, but I, I don't know the specifics. And to me, I, I read the whole like... For example, not to go off this tangent, but I, I read Ashlee Vance's biography, um, on Elon Musk, and my one question was, "Why is he in this relationship pattern?" Uh, and it's, it probably has a lot to do with certain insecurities he had as a child or whatever, but those were like... The tiny glimpses of that were really interesting to me, uh, because I think we tend to leave interpersonal relationships out of the narrative of success.

   10. CWChris Williamson5:44

       The ruthless thing about feeling jealous about somebody else, and about people that are high performers, is precisely what you've touched on there, that you don't know what that person's had to sacrifice to get to where they are. There's this example I always use. Have you heard of Eddie Hall? Do you know who he is? Strongest man on the planet.

   11. PPPolina Pompliano6:02

       No.

   12. CWChris Williamson6:02

       So he's a British guy. He was the strongest man in the world 2018, I want to say. And, um, he was six foot three.160 kilos. He was on the verge of death, basically. He couldn't walk up, like he was just, everything about him was fucked. His, um, marriage was falling apart, his wife was about to leave him, he didn't have a relationship with his kid, he was probably about to die because of all of the stresses he was putting his body under. And then just at the peak of that, he won The World's Strongest Man. And he said-

   13. PPPolina Pompliano6:36

       Hah.

   14. CWChris Williamson6:36

       ... he said as he won it there and then, he was like, "That's me. I'm done. Like I've closed the loop. I'm now gonna save my marriage, I'm now gonna save my, uh, relationship with my daughter. I'm now gonna save my own health. As an athlete, I'm going to save my own health." And what we look at with someone like him or like David Goggins or like Elon Musk, the success that they have is so tightly bounded within a very narrow domain. And we in 2020 and 2021, we applaud and put on a pedestal success to such a degree that we're able to look at someone that has that sort of a life and then think that that constitutes success. Tiger Woods was in a, a car accident recently the other day, like that is a man whose life, whose entire life is epitomized in a car crash-

   15. PPPolina Pompliano7:23

       Right.

   16. CWChris Williamson7:24

       ... other than the one thing that he's really, really superhuman at doing. He struggles with relationships. He had substance problems. He is injured all the time. It doesn't really seem like he loves himself. His dad abused him for years as a kid calling him the N-word. He had a sa- do you know he had a safe word with his dad?

   17. PPPolina Pompliano7:42

       I did not.

   18. CWChris Williamson7:42

       So you know like in rough sex people have a safe word?

   19. PPPolina Pompliano7:45

       (laughs)

   20. CWChris Williamson7:45

       His dad would be there on the course saying, "You're useless, this racist slur, you're that whatever." Um-

   21. PPPolina Pompliano7:52

       Ah.

   22. CWChris Williamson7:52

       But they had a word called the E-word and it was enough.

   23. PPPolina Pompliano7:57

       Oh, I did read, yeah, yeah, yeah, I did read about this.

   24. CWChris Williamson7:58

       It was in Ryan Holiday's, in one of Ryan Holiday's books. Um, but, but the sort of common theme there is we look at people's performance and their successes in such a tight window and the cult of personality and our, uh, adoration of success means that-

   25. PPPolina Pompliano8:13

       Mm-hmm.

   26. CWChris Williamson8:14

       ... we're happy to see someone nearly die, nearly lose their marriage, nearly do all of this stuff because we want them to be the super- the superhero for that thing. Um, but you don't-

   27. PPPolina Pompliano8:23

       Yeah.

   28. CWChris Williamson8:23

       ... you, you don't want their life. If you were to ask someone like, "Do you really want to swap with Elon Musk?" Like you don't know, he might not have had an erection in months. He might hate his body when he looks in the mirror. He might not be able to have silence in his head when he's, uh, when his head hits the pillow at night. Like is that the price you really want to pay to be him?

   29. PPPolina Pompliano8:41

       I always say that every time that, let's say you wanna, let's say you're just out of college and you admire somebody and you're like, "I would love that life. I would love that career. I would love that path." What I recommend doing is if you can ideally you would call up the person or email them and try to talk to them and ask like, "Okay, but what have you had to sacrifice?" And like, "What does this look like?" Because we're really bad at predicting our future happiness and what better way than to find the person who is already there that we think has, has it all and ask them about the process of getting there. If you cannot, you know, interview them or meet with them in person, I would try to research every aspect of their life. Like that's what I did with Sara Blakely, um, try to research every aspect of their life. Look at interviews they've done. How do they present themselves? How do they answer questions about their (laughs) current relationship, et cetera? And then try to draw conclusions about yourself of like, okay, but you're gonna have to sacrifice, you know, having kids or not having time for your kids, all that stuff in order to get there. Is that worth it to you? If it is, go ahead. But like I think i- it opens your eyes to a lot of things that you might not want.

   30. CWChris Williamson9:55

       We often don't realize that these people are real humans. Like you look at someone like Goggins and you're like, that guy is just a like motivated, dedicated, kicking ass motherfucker.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Mm-hmm. Absolutely. I, so…

   1. CWChris Williamson15:00

   2. PPPolina Pompliano15:00

      Mm-hmm. Absolutely. I, so okay, can I give you an example of that? Um, when I first left Fortune to work on the profile full-time, I, my original goal was, "Oh, well this is great." So right now I curate a bunch of profiles in this newsletter, over time I'm gonna start writing original profiles. And, w- but like my thinking was so limited in that I came, uh, to the table with the assumptions that an original profile was text, a headline, text, maybe a photo, some more text, maybe a video that's relevant, some more text. That's, that's what a profile was, that's what I wrote for Fortune, that's what I wrote at CNN. Like all those things, um, had been defined way before my time. But who is to say that a profile looks, or that a block of text is a profile? We saw what, um, Brandon Stanton does with Humans of New York. That's, those are profiles, but they are profiles done, done in a different format. So then I was like oh my god, like okay. So then I asked my question, like what makes a profile a profile? How can you distill the essence of somebody into something that people will learn from or that like kind of shows who they are as a person? And the truth is, it could be in the form of audio, it could be in the form of video, it could be in the form of something that doesn't exist yet, but it was only when I started thinking that way that I was like oh, interesting, like I could help define what that is. Uh, but I, I still haven't gotten an answer to that, I'm still thinking about it, but I think that that's like the types of question we have, questions we have to ask ourselves instead of just assuming we know what something is, being like oh wait a second, who, who, who decided that a profile is a block of text?

   3. CWChris Williamson16:46

      One of the things that I find works so well for me in terms of personal development is when I question my assumptions. And the weird thing about that is you can only really do it a couple of times a year, because it's very difficult to question your assumptions when you're busy doing, ge- taking care of the urgent and the important-

   4. PPPolina Pompliano17:03

      Yes.

   5. CWChris Williamson17:03

      ... but at the end of each year, people might do an end of year review and feel this, that they actually think like, "Well, hang on, I, I, I've had this thing that I've had in my morning routine or this way that I make my food or this particular w- uh, format in which my day is constructed," whatever it might be, "do I actually have to do that? Like do I re- do I genuinely really need to do that?" And when you question those assumptions, that's kind of when everything goes out and you get to go from much more a first principles perspective. You said that Elon sort of is a, a true first principles thinker, and I'd agree. Do you think there's anyone from history that would be similar to him? Is there anyone that you've found, or anyone alive?

   6. PPPolina Pompliano17:43

      Yeah. Uh, from history, I think, I think you could say da Vinci was a really original thinker. He kind of, uh, looked at two disparate ideas and allowed his brain to make natural connections between them. I think one of the examples is how he, uh, basically was, um, what was he doing? He threw a rock into a well and he saw the, the ripples in the water at the same time that a church bell went off and he heard the sound and how it kind of like was really strong and then it dissipated. So that kind of led to his theory that sound travels in waves. Um, I, I mean that's, that's pretty original, um, but you have to let your brain kind of do the work for you. I think another really, really original thinker that I was inspired by is Grant Achatz, who is a chef. He has a restaurant in Chicago called Alinea. Multiple times it's been called the best restaurant in the world. He, um...... he ba- basically challenges every s- sort of assumption that's been around forever, uh, kind of like, for example, uh, uh, he gets inspired by everything. So, he'll go, go to a museum, look at, uh, art on the wall and say, "Why can't I eat off of that?" So, okay, then he, like, um, puts... he creates the whole table to look like a painting that you can eat off of. But also, he's like, um, "Who, why do plate manufacturers decide, like, how I'm gonna display my food? And, um, I don't wanna be limited to that. And why do we make this motion, uh, when we eat, which is, like, how we eat always?" Um, so he scrapped that. He created something that's like a floating food. When it floats to you, you can eat it. It disrupts the motion of eating from, uh, hand to mouth, which is crazy. Um, but I, I just, I like people like that because yes, they're original thinkers, but I think, to your point a little bit, when you're busy, you don't have time for that. So, uh, Spotify, uh, CEO Daniel Ek says that he literally bakes that thinking time into his schedule, where it's uninterrupted time to question those a- those assumptions 'cause I agree, like, in the weeks where I'm super busy, I don't have time to think about what a profile looks like. Uh, but if you, if you give a little bit of, uh, distance and time to your brain to think about those things, it really helps.

   7. CWChris Williamson20:02

      Yeah, the explore versus exploit paradigm, as James Clear talks about it, where you do spend more time. But as we get older and presumably more successful or more... uh, at least we get more status around the things that we do, we become entrenched in those thinking patterns, in those working patterns. And, um, you must see this with your business as well, that when you find a little bit of success, it's actually really difficult to let go of that 'cause you're like, "Well, no, like, that, that's actually worked. I've been playing around, trying to desperately get something to go well, I finally managed to do it." And there's this bit of me that's saying, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but let's see if we can do it better." And you're like, "No, fuck you."

   8. PPPolina Pompliano20:41

      (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson20:41

      (Laughs) "Like, I've just, I've just about managed to get something to not be terrible. Like, le- le- let's keep going on that." You said about, um, Elon constantly upgrading his mind.

   10. PPPolina Pompliano20:50

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson20:51

       What, what are some of the practices that he does for that to occur?

   12. PPPolina Pompliano20:55

       Um, uh, like, for example, he'll pick something and he'll start learning it from scratch. Like, you can't learn about rockets unless you learn about physics (laughs) . Uh, so he starts from, like, the... he r- describes his learning process as, um, a, a tree. So, you have to start at the roots before you go to the trunk, before you go through, to the branches and the leaves. You can't start with the leaves and then work your way backwards. Uh, and the leaves being the minute details, uh, of, you know, rockets. So, I think that's one. Uh, Grant Achatz makes his staff blow up the menu every six months, no matter how successful it is. And so, that's, like, that's the whole thing, because he believes that success can lead to complacency. And when you're complacent, you can't be original, you can't be innovative. So, no matter how great it is, and his whole staff is like, "Oh, come on, man. Like, this is the best menu we've created," and he's like, "Nope, gotta innovate." Um, and the other person who does this, uh, that I mentioned already is, uh, Humans of New York creator, Brandon Stanton. He started... um, the... Humans of New York has evolved so much that he's said that criticism that he received about Humans of New York two years ago never applies today because he's evolved it so much. He went from, uh, just photographing people on the street, to adding a little quote, to doing a whole interview, to doing a book, to doing a profile series, kind of, uh, one person, several posts. Then when the pandemic hit, he started doing them remote. And he was like, "Wherever the wind was blowing, I was always willing to take what I'm working on right now and whatever's been successful, drop it, and move in that direction." And I think that as long as you keep in your mind the overall mission and brand promise of what you're working on is, as long as you keep that in mind and you always deliver on that, the, the how you get there can vary. And I think not a lot of people are willing to drop everything and go in a different direction.

   13. CWChris Williamson22:56

       Is that how you've tried to apply this to the things that you do?

   14. PPPolina Pompliano23:01

       Absolutely. Always. Um, whenever I get criticism, uh... Kat Cole says this, she says, "Whenever somebody criticizes something you do, no matter how rude or the manner it's in, if it feels mean or offensive or whatever, the first thing you should do is just assume that it's true." If you approach your life as, like, you just assume it's true, then you can be like, "Oh, maybe, like, there's a grain of truth here." And to be honest (laughs) , Chris, like, at Fortune, I wrote a daily newsletter, and the feedback was brutal. Especially in the very early days, I, you know, I didn't have such thick skin, um, so things would get to me and I would remember, I'd be like, "Damn," like, "Am I not a good writer?" But once you hear something over and over again, you're like, "Okay, let me try this other thing, and if it doesn't work, like, maybe I'm just... it's not for me." But I found that, um, just taking the feedback, evolving what you do, and then looking back and being like, "Was that a good decision or did I just do that because I got nervous and whatever?" uh, it helps inform a lot about, uh, your business, and it helps you, like, it helps you not get stale.

   15. CWChris Williamson24:14

       Yeah, it's an interesting one that. I, um, I vacillate with my opinions around criticism. Some of the things and some of the changes I've made have actually been borne out of stuff that people say. Mm, the challenge I think I would have with, at first, going from base this is true as opposed to base this person is a complete idiot is that-

   16. PPPolina Pompliano24:38

       (laughs) .

   17. CWChris Williamson24:38

       ... the vast majority of stuff that I see on the internet falls into category two than category one, um, and-

   18. PPPolina Pompliano24:43

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson24:45

       I had Seth Godin on the show actually, and he was talking around criticism, and he said that he removed comments from his blog. Because he knew-

   20. PPPolina Pompliano24:53

       Hmm.

   21. CWChris Williamson24:53

       ... that if he left comments on his blog, he would make each post just a little bit longer with a couple more caveats in, and he'd have some more prepositions in there, and he try and sort of assess what people ... He was second order writing the article to debate against the point at which he thought people were going to... And they got rid of it. And people were like, "You, you can't get rid of the comments on a blog. It's a blog." He's like, "Well, no, I just did." And, um, and now he's like, "My w- my writings got linearly better ever since I had." Um, yeah, I think criticism and the way that people deal with it is quite individual. But if you could get away with taking it like that, I think that it's very beneficial.

   22. PPPolina Pompliano25:29

       So hold on and, and let me just add this very important thing that it matters the source, right? Like, be mindful of the source. I probably don't listen to 99% of the things that people on Twitter say to me, probably because they are not people who read my work on a, a weekly basis. They are not people who actually took the time to give me mindful feedback. I think, like Seth said, okay, shut down the comments, but the people who go through all the hurdles to find your email, to get into your inbox, to share something thoughtful, those are the people I'm like, "Oh, okay, like, you actually took time and you went through all these obstacles to get to me. I should probably listen."

   23. CWChris Williamson26:07

       Yeah.

   24. PPPolina Pompliano26:08

       Uh, uh, yeah, the source is incredibly important.

   25. CWChris Williamson26:10

       Absolutely. I mean, I got this message, I still haven't replied to it, it's still in my message requests, uh, on Instagram. This guy identified a bunch of stuff to do with the previous guest that I'd had on and gave me this really long rebuttal, but it was super well thought out, very complimentary, very, very mindful. And I just thought, like, "I need to..." The reason I haven't replied is 'cause I'm not, I can't just sort of dismiss this.

   26. PPPolina Pompliano26:34

       Right.

   27. CWChris Williamson26:34

       I can't decide delete it or say like, "Thanks, mate. Cheers. Give me a-"

   28. PPPolina Pompliano26:37

       Yeah. (laughs)

   29. CWChris Williamson26:38

       "... give, give me a review on, on iTunes." Like, so yeah, I had to... I, I'm gonna go back to that, but very much I think you can, you can take it, take it with a pinch of salt when it's needed. You looked at, um, The Rock as well, and then he tweeted you.

   30. PPPolina Pompliano26:51

       Yeah.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   How do people avoid…

   1. PPPolina Pompliano30:00

      just... if you take that small extra step of tagging somebody on Twitter or forwarding the email to their people, you just never know where, like, you'll get, quote unquote, "lucky".

   2. CWChris Williamson30:13

      How do people avoid the perfection trap when doing that? Because trying to cover all of the bases can often end up with people not shipping work at a pace which is required to iterate and grow, and I don't know whether-

   3. PPPolina Pompliano30:31

      Yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson30:31

      I would be interested to know whether the vast majority of people undershoot and ship too fast at too low of a quality or overshoot and ship too slowly at too high of a quality. But Tiago Forte had this quote, which you may have seen, uh, from the other day, which is unbelievable, and he said, "A paradoxical thing about people who consistently choose the most high leverage activity is their efforts have a rough edged half-assed quality, because polishing things to perfection is a low leverage activity."

   5. PPPolina Pompliano30:58

      Absolutely. Oh, okay.

   6. CWChris Williamson30:59

      So good. And then this other guy replied and said, "Perfectionism is a nice way to hide from shipping at a pace necessary to find what works."

   7. PPPolina Pompliano31:09

      Yes. Oh my God. Um, okay. So, uh, I think I realized this when I realized that, um, doing good work is actually the enemy of perfection, and also that perfection's a mental construct that doesn't really exist. Honestly, to me, that Rock profile wasn't perfection. To The Rock it may have been. Like to the fact that I never interviewed him for this, and he thought his story was well-told enough to share it with his audience. I mean, that's, that's a massive compliment, right? So for me, there is nothing worse than seeing super talented people who are waiting for something to be perfect and polished and beautiful until they launch it, and they're not, um, focusing on let's like, let's like put this out there, see how people react, and then the next version will be much better. Because nothing that exists today, exists in its current form without having to go through that iterative process. Humans of New York started as something bad. It evolved into something amazing, but it would never gotten to where it is now if it hadn't gotten like, if Brandon hadn't just started and gotten all that feedback and learned, "Oh wait, I'm not the best photographer, but I'm really damn good at talking to strangers." Like that's something you learn in the process and that's why like I've honestly, I've never been afraid of somebody giving me feedback because I know it can be better, but I am afraid of waiting for something to be perfect in my mind, putting it out there and then getting crickets and being like, "Oh well, guess nobody saw my beautiful perfect thing."

   8. CWChris Williamson32:50

      (laughs) Yeah. No one except for you knows the potential that you left on the field.

   9. PPPolina Pompliano32:55

      Absolutely.

   10. CWChris Williamson32:56

       No one at all. You... I'm going through a couple of YouTube courses at the moment, and one of the things that they're really trying to drill into, uh, all of the creators is look, even if you think that you were a bit tired that day, a bit sloppy, you didn't like your hair, you thought the lines weren't so slick or whatever it is, no one else knows what it could have been.

   11. PPPolina Pompliano33:16

       Right.

   12. CWChris Williamson33:16

       Only you know what it could have been. It's a very odd asymmetry, like a reverse parasocial relationship with your own creation, where you're like, "I'm the only one that actually knows what it was supposed to be, could have been." Everybody else thinks that's just what you put out there, and if you go about it with enough gumption and energy, they're probably gonna be seduced into thinking... I mean, what did we say at the beginning of this? Like there are people out there who can annihilate their entire life and win at a thing and people think that they're great. Like if they can do that-

   13. PPPolina Pompliano33:48

       Absolutely.

   14. CWChris Williamson33:48

       ... if they can do that, you can probably get away with thinking like, "Well yeah, maybe it's not perfect, but it's good enough," which is what Seth Godin says his rule of thumb is. What, talk us through the specific techniques that you learned from The Rock. Are you getting up at 4:00 AM and doing kettlebell swings or something?

   15. PPPolina Pompliano34:05

       (laughs) Definitely not. Um, so, uh, let's see, The Rock. One of the things he says is that, um, he, I, I think this is slightly, uh, similar to the complacency that I talked about. He, as a kid, he wasn't great. He was arrested, he was like stealing, he, you know, he, he did a bunch of things that he's not proud of. Uh, but, and he failed at a bunch of things, but he, um, he says, "Always keep your failures at the forefront of your mind." And he says like, "By living life as if he is one week from getting evicted or one day away." Like you kind of start to realize like all of us, um, you never know what's gonna happen, and it is a very fine line between your great success and losing it all. He's been there, he's seen what can happen. He had a great like football career, that came to an end due to an injury. You never, like Tiger Woods, I mean, God forbid, but like who knows what happened in that car crash and who knows what the future of his career is. When, um, when your success depends on something external that you could lose, then it's very, very hard to live in peace. Um, but I think that his whole thing is, "I keep my failures at the forefront of my mind because I know what it's like to have been there, and I'm not afraid to be there again because I know I can build it back up," or whatever he tells himself. But I, I just, I think that there's great value in going through something really, really difficult and not kind of forgetting about it or shoving it to the back of your mind and constantly reminding of yours- yourself, "Hey, by the way, like things could, things could be bad again. But I think I have all the tools necessary to get through it."

   16. CWChris Williamson35:55

       That self-esteem is, it's a topic, it's a word that I just, I hadn't heard for ages. And then Naval tweeted it toward the back end of last year and said, "Self-esteem is the reputation you have with yourself you'll always know." And we talk a lot about confidence and charisma and being outgoing and extroversion. Everyone's a- addicted to talking about whether you're an introvert or an extrovert.

   17. PPPolina Pompliano36:18

       Yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson36:18

       But no one ever actually talks about self-esteem. And it very much is, James Clear says, um, "Decide the sort of person you want to be, prove it to yourself with progressively bigger wins." And-

   19. PPPolina Pompliano36:30

       Yeah.

   20. CWChris Williamson36:30

       ... that's what self-esteem is. One of the things I've been thinking about a lot is, I, I've gained a lot of self-esteem over the last couple of years, and I, I wanna try and work out where it's come from because it's quite useful. And, uh-

   21. PPPolina Pompliano36:44

       Yeah. (laughs)

   22. CWChris Williamson36:44

       (laughs) and um, I think a big part of it has just been progressively bigger wins, that I did some stuff that I was successful at but didn't, wasn't super meaningful to me throughout my 20s. And now I do something which is pretty meaningful to me and I'm like, "Okay, there's only so many times that you can succeed in the real world and your imposter syndrome still cut through it and say, 'Yeah, but you didn't deserve that.'"Like-

   23. PPPolina Pompliano37:08

       Hmm.

   24. CWChris Williamson37:08

       ... after a while, the imposter syndrome just has to fuck off, because you're like, "Well, I just- I, I keep on- you keep on saying I'm not gonna do it, and then I kind of inevitably, at one point, I do get there." Um, so yes-

   25. PPPolina Pompliano37:20

       Yeah.

   26. CWChris Williamson37:20

       ... self-esteem and building yourself up like that, having faith that the future you will deal with whatever happens. Like, everybody that's listening to this podcast right now, no matter all of the catastrophes, the late nights, the sweaty sheets, the neurotic thought leaps, all of that stuff, no matter everything that you thought was going to end your life, you're here-

   27. PPPolina Pompliano37:41

       Yeah.

   28. CWChris Williamson37:41

       ... listening to this podcast, absolutely fine. Like, if that isn't a sign that you're probably gonna be okay, that the thing you're worried about is probably going to end up all right, I don't know what is.

   29. PPPolina Pompliano37:53

       Yes. And I, I call this, like, the, like the "oh, shit" moments. So when, um ... I've had many of those, but one that I remember very clearly is when I was at Fortune. I was just a reporter and, um, the person who was writing Fortune's daily deal-making newsletter, Term Sheet, left. Term Sheet is a beast of a newsletter. You gotta go through all the deals, you gotta figure out who's buying who, who's raising funding, which firm is raising a fund. Like, you're going through all this. On top of that, you have to write something intelligent and some sort of analysis at the top for these very important people who are reading this newsletter. I was acutely aware of this. I did not think I was in any way qualified. Nobody knew who the hell I was. And this person left, the, the writer of the newsletter left, and they were like, "Well, Paulina, like, literally, you're the closest we have to somebody who may be able to write this. But, like, you're gonna be doing this for the interim while we find somebody who's actually, um, you know, can do this." And so I- so they asked me, right? So they went, "Do you want to?" (laughs) And I was like, "Uh, I really don't." But in my head, my head was going, "No, no, no, no, no." And I was like, "Absolutely. I would love to give it a shot." And then I went home and I was like, "What the hell have you done?" But I think, like, the moments for me that build up my self-esteem are the moments where you drop me, like, in the middle of the ocean-

   30. CWChris Williamson39:19

       (laughs)
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   How much do you…

   1. PPPolina Pompliano45:00

      to them. So pay attention to that. One thing I noticed about Kris Jenner that she kept saying over and over and over again, people didn't press her on, was she said, um, whenever... She was like, "Over the course of my life, I've learned that whenever somebody says no, that means I'm talking to the wrong person." It shows a level of persistence that most people do not have. If you get rejected a bunch of times, you're probably gonna feel defeated. She did not. And she had the benefit of her first marriage with, um, Rob Kardashian, Robert Kardashian, um, that, uh, basically she, she didn't have a business school education. She was just surrounded by these, like, really successful people. So she heard things and she learned things, and it was solely through the power of observation. And then she was like, "All right, I can do this myself." But I just admire the fact that she, you know, her life, she didn't make great decisions in her personal life, but over time, she found success in this one area. And, you know, she, she took advantage of it, which a lot of people do.

   2. CWChris Williamson46:11

      How much do you think she was important in the architecture of creating the Kardashians as they are?

   3. PPPolina Pompliano46:19

      Yeah. So, uh, she once said, uh, "I'm gonna... We got our 15 minutes of fame. My job is to turn it into 30." She was very, very, very strategic about it. Um, but her initial thought was, when they got the show on television, she was like, "Oh my God, we have these, uh, clothing stores. This- they're gonna film in our clothing stores. We're gonna sell a whole lot of T-shirts." What she didn't realize is, is that, you know, success kind of begets success. And then, like, the TV show would be big, way bigger than their little, um, clothing stores. But she also understands the power of distribution, which is why I believe like, two of her kids are maybe billionaires. Maybe. I, I k- I have not verified this. But, um, she, they all have businesses. Every single one of her kids has a business. And, um, even, even Rob, he has a sock business. Uh, but, but the, the point is, she understood the value of building an audience early on in s- the days of social media, having an authentic voice, talking directly to the consumer. Then that develops an emotional connection, right? With the Kardashians, you feel like you're part of the family, you're invested, emotionally invested. Then you wanna buy whatever they have. But once you have the audience, she knew, "I can put any product in front of them." And because people are so invested and, and it's such a large, uh, audience, I mean, you can, you can do whatever you want. It's, it's a really interesting case study in, like, marketing and communications, and it's fascinating, but very, very integral to their success.

   4. CWChris Williamson47:55

      I think I got sent a clip from Husband Pompliano talking about this new way of creating products for the market that's creator led and audience first. Uh, George, George Mack is currently screaming into his AirPods about what it is, 'cause I'm gonna butcher it. Basically, what I think he was saying-

   5. PPPolina Pompliano48:18

      (laughs)

   6. CWChris Williamson48:19

      ... was that originally what you would do is you would do a little bit of market research, then you would create a product that you think fits the market-

   7. PPPolina Pompliano48:26

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CWChris Williamson48:26

      ... in a age of ubiquitous, uh, communication where we can go back and forth from creator to audience quite easily, and also, as the creator, you form the interests of the audience, what he thinks we're going to see people doing-

   9. PPPolina Pompliano48:43

      Ooh.

   10. CWChris Williamson48:44

       ... as platforms continue to grow, and audiences continue to grow, and relationships with creators continue to grow, is that you'll actually have someone who comes from an audience first perspective. "Here's me with my TikTok account, or my podcast, or my YouTube channel. And then I'm gonna get to half a million subs and say, 'Okay, what, what do you want to learn from me?' Like, 'What's the teachable course, the skill share, the product, the whatever that you want?'" And then they're just gonna go away and make that.... it's like, the, the inversion, it's like, okay, I have this relationship with this person, I'll pretty much, as you said, Kardashians, I'll buy whatever they, whatever they make. But that's like the Kardashians putting a poll up halfway through, like during the ad break, and going like, "Do you want, do you want pink dresses or do you want blue dresses?" And then-

   11. PPPolina Pompliano49:30

       Dress.

   12. CWChris Williamson49:30

       ... creating what the audience wants. And I think that, that really is, um, if you roll that forward, that's a good way to start to decentralize some of the earning potential away from big business to small business, because big business is never ever ever going to have that relationship with its customers. They can win on scale, but they can never win on personality.

   13. PPPolina Pompliano49:53

       The one thing I've learned from years of writing newsletters is that at the end of the day, and I don't know if this is new, maybe it is, but I just, I see this trend, is that people trust people and people are, mm-mm, increasingly losing trust in institutions, whether they're financial institutions or media institutions. And you're seeing, like, I, I firsthand saw people who opened that newsletter every single day and took the time to respond to me, and I talked to them like a human being. Whereas I don't think that most people every day when they wake up go to like, uh, you know, Forbes.com, Fortune.com, CNN.com, very rarely. You probably got that, you're reading that article that you're reading right now because somebody on Twitter that you trust recommended it. So, uh, it's, I, I think that there's, uh, a... people are decoupling that, um, trust from, uh, quality of information. And I think that's why you're seeing the rise of things like Substack, which is a newsletter platform. Um, and, and, like you said, okay, I'm, I'm 21 let's say, I'm on TikTok, suddenly I have millions (laughs) of people and all I've done is put, uh, videos of myself dancing on TikTok. The smart people use their 15 minutes of fame to parlay it into something else. Do you wanna be an investor? You see these all, all these TikTok kids trying to do investing now and learn from these people. Do you, um, do you wanna start a business? Uh, Addison Rae, who is the top, the highest earner on TikTok right now is now gonna be in a movie. She's, uh, partnering with the Kardashians on a product. Like, all these things that I think, yes, you may have gotten lucky and gotten some sort of, um, fame or audience or whatever, but the question is, how are you going to do it and parlay it into years ahead? Um, and Kris Jenner says that every single year she has sat down with every single child and she asks them, "What is your goal for the year and how can I help make that happen?" So, it's like, they are very intentional, they are very focused, and they're disciplined. And it goes, I mean, you can't deny that they've been part of the culture, if not some of them setting the culture, for more than a decade.

   14. CWChris Williamson52:11

       It's not a surprise that they've ended up where they are. I didn't realize just how intentional Kris Jenner had been with this construction. I now almost feel like it's The Truman Show and I'm living in, like, Kris Jenner's world.

   15. PPPolina Pompliano52:24

       (laughs)

   16. CWChris Williamson52:24

       And she's like, "Welcome, welcome back to Kris Jenner globe."

   17. PPPolina Pompliano52:28

       Right. (laughs)

   18. CWChris Williamson52:29

       Yeah. Um, you looked at Bill Gates, didn't you?

   19. PPPolina Pompliano52:33

       Mm-hmm.

   20. CWChris Williamson52:33

       Obviously there's been-

   21. PPPolina Pompliano52:35

       Melinda Gates.

   22. CWChris Williamson52:35

       Oh, was it Melinda Gates or Bill?

   23. PPPolina Pompliano52:37

       (laughs) Uh, I've done a dossier on Melinda, but Bill I've read profiles on.

   24. CWChris Williamson52:43

       Got you. Okay. What's interesting about their relationship?

   25. PPPolina Pompliano52:48

       Um, v- very interesting. So, okay, so that's another example of people, and like, I'm very curious, you are two very, very influential and powerful people, you do your work together. How, like, how? (laughs) And so I, uh, saw something... I, I read everything that's ever been written about Melinda Gates and, and that involved, you know, some conversations with Bill as well. But, um, she basically said, "Criticize in private, but when you're in public, you've got to be a united front." Like, I'm s- they, they argue, they, they fight, like any p- people, any couple, but when they're in public, they're united and then they, uh, resolve their issues, uh, sorry, they're united in public but they resolve their issues in private. And I think that that is so important because we all know the people who go out in public, hang out with their friends, and they're just constantly bickering, they're not on the same page. Okay, now imagine doing that but like with 10 cameras in your face and tabloids and newspapers and whatever, that is a, a recipe for disaster. And I, um, I remember taking a journalism class in college and my professor told me that basically the best editors, um, they, they, um, they criticize like, uh, in, in person, they talk to you when they criticize, and they put the, the compliments and the praise in writing because you're probably gonna keep that. Uh, the criticisms, e- if you put it in writing, it kind of, it, it's a hit every time you look at it. So, uh, I, I find the same thing and I think there was one thing Melinda said that at their wedding, I think it was Bill's parents gave them this statue of two birds looking in the same direction and they still have it at their house, outside of their house. And the whole idea is like we're gonna feel differently about everything all the time and we're gonna have different opinions and perspectives and whatever. The point, though, of marriage is to always be looking at the, in the same direction. And that means having the same foundational values, having the same g- or similar goals, and helping each other get there. Um, I, I just, I think that's a very powerful way to think about if you're ever gonna be in a relationship, let alone a relationship where like, um, when you argue, billions of dollars are at stake. (laughs)

   26. CWChris Williamson55:10

       (laughs)

   27. PPPolina Pompliano55:11

       (laughs)

   28. CWChris Williamson55:11

       Yeah, the e- the externality of most relationship arguments isn't like a significant portion of the US GDP. Um-

   29. PPPolina Pompliano55:18

       Exactly.

   30. CWChris Williamson55:19

       I had George on the show, uh, towards the back end of last year, and he talked about the single unifying principle that guides every decision Elon makes and that also guides every decision that Jeff Bezos makes, or made I guess now. Uh-
5. 1:00:00 – 1:08:58

   That's awesome. What have…

   1. PPPolina Pompliano1:00:00

      when she started Spanx, or before she started Spanx, she always wanted to be a trial attorney but then she bombed the LSAT. She wanted to be Goofy at Disney World but she wasn't tall enough to fit in the costume. Mm-hmm. So, like, all of these stupid things and she was like, "Oh my God." Um, but, but she didn't give up in the face of failure and then she has this quote that I just, like, always think about, is, um, she says, "Well, if I had aced the LSAT, Spanx wouldn't exist today." So, like, yes, if, if you had succeeded at the one thing you so badly wanted to, this other path wouldn't have been known to you. Um, so I, I think, like, they are willing to reinvent themselves and they, (clears throat) they frame failure as, "You didn't try hard enough," and not, "I failed and I am miserable and I'm stupid and I, I can't do this again." Um, the other thing is that they, whenever they lack self-esteem or confidence, and we touched on this with the alter egos, they create a persona that's, it- it's not even an alter ego, it's an aspirational self. So, for example, Beyonce was super introverted and, uh, shy before just all her, in her normal life. But, like, the things she wanted to do, which was this, you know, sing in front of hundreds of thousands of people on stage, she had to be confident and she had to appear that she had this, like, massive energy, you know, like bigger than life, uh, persona. So she created Sasha Fierce to be like, "Okay-"... in my life I'm Beyonce, but on stage I'm Sasha Fierce. I'm go- and I'm gonna embody this character. And to her, it was like a character, like it wasn't her. Um, Kobe did this with the Black Mamba. At a time when people were booing Kobe off the court, at his lowest moment in his career, he created something called the Black Mamba, which allowed him, when he's on the court, he's like, "I'm not taking this personally because I'm not Kobe right now. I'm the Black Mamba." So over time, these aspirational selves, we kind of trend towards them, right? And we end up becoming these people. I was the same way. I hated, I was so nervous. Like, uh, we would never be able to do this right now if you had met me 10 years ago, because I was so nervous. My voice would shake. I would get red, I would start sweating. Like, it wasn't good. But I knew that in order to succeed in any sort of field, I needed to be a good public speaker and I needed to learn how to express myself. So I, I started practicing, but whenever I went on stage, I would be like, "I'm Polina, this like important journalist who's doing her job." And when I would step off stage, I, I still remember thinking, "God, like I wish that in my daily life I could have that, that I have on stage." Which is so weird to think, but I think over time you start to, um, get closer to that aspirational self.

   2. CWChris Williamson1:02:55

      That's awesome. What have you failed at over the last couple of weeks? Is there a failure that comes to mind?

   3. PPPolina Pompliano1:03:01

      Over the last couple of weeks?

   4. CWChris Williamson1:03:03

      Yeah. You're supposed to have one, you're supposed to have a big failure per day.

   5. PPPolina Pompliano1:03:07

      Oh God, let me think of a big juicy one. (laughs)

   6. CWChris Williamson1:03:10

      I haven't... So, uh, one, one of my friends asked me this question. The reason I ask is one of my buddies asked me this question about a year ago, and I was like, "Dude, I can't think of..." (laughs) Like, I mean, it sounds like such a privileged position. It's like, "Oh no, like, everything's just going so well." And it's like, obviously not that everything's going so well.

   7. PPPolina Pompliano1:03:28

      Right.

   8. CWChris Williamson1:03:28

      But it did make me think, and everyone that's listening as well, think what have you failed at recently? What comes to mind as a failure? And I started to assess and I was like, "Well, is it just that I'm hiding my fail- am I failing on a, a regular basis and I'm just hiding them away?" I was like, "No, I don't, I don't think it's that. What is it?" And I was trying to work out, was it I'm not taking sufficient risks? I'm like, "Well, when it comes to business, I'm quite risk averse. I quite enjoy being risk averse."

   9. PPPolina Pompliano1:03:54

      Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson1:03:54

       "I'm fairly conservative with the way that I actually treat my sort of business operations and stuff. I like slow and steady wins the race." So that was just... I don't have an answer around this, um, but I was someone for whom the dad would be scowling at, at lunchtime or dinnertime every single day. 'Cause I'd be like, "Nope, just played it nice and safe again today, Dad."

   11. PPPolina Pompliano1:04:16

       Yeah. Well, so, okay. So I feel the same way, because I think like, um, when you think of failure, you think of these like catastrophic things. Uh, so, but when I think of failure as like, I didn't try hard enough or I gave up on something that I shouldn't have given up on. And so for, in the last week for example, I, uh, was trying to get someone to be interviewed for The Profile, and there was, there was promise, there was traction, and then suddenly they ghosted me. So I was like, "Well, what do I do?" So I followed up, and then I followed up again, and it's like, I'm not getting an answer. I, I don't... Like that, you could consider that a failure to get this person to be on your platform for an interview. But at the same time, like maybe I just, you know, there's, there's... Maybe I should reach out to somebody else that I equal- it would be equally as great, and I haven't done that. Um, I, I think that there's like a, there's something to be said about, okay, you failed at something, but like did you try something else to recover or to go down a different path? So.

   12. CWChris Williamson1:05:18

       Yeah. Yeah. I like that.

   13. PPPolina Pompliano1:05:20

       Kind of a juicy one, though.

   14. CWChris Williamson1:05:21

       No, I w- I dunno. I wanna, I'm sure that there'll be some, I'll end up with comments below that will talk about some catastrophic failure-

   15. PPPolina Pompliano1:05:27

       I know.

   16. CWChris Williamson1:05:27

       ... that someone, that someone's just, "Oh, I crash- crashed my dad's boat." Or like, "Ran over a, run over a cow and trashed the car," whatever it might be. Um...

   17. PPPolina Pompliano1:05:36

       Oh no, Chris.

   18. CWChris Williamson1:05:37

       No, that's not me. That's not me.

   19. PPPolina Pompliano1:05:38

       (laughs)

   20. CWChris Williamson1:05:38

       Um...

   21. PPPolina Pompliano1:05:38

       Okay, okay, okay. (laughs)

   22. CWChris Williamson1:05:40

       Yeah. I, um, I do think that the, the, one of the common threads I'm seeing here is talking about this self-esteem, talking about this belief that we have in ourselves, like realizing that failure sort of isn't that big of a deal. And, um, it's so interesting, because it feels so catastrophic at the time. Like...

   23. PPPolina Pompliano1:06:00

       Yeah.

   24. CWChris Williamson1:06:01

       One thing that I wish that we could do is to be able to take snapshots of how our mental state was in the past, and like revisit them. I suppose this is kind of what journaling is. And you go back and you read the, the sort of thoughts which appeared in consciousness three years ago or five years ago, and you go, "Oh my god, I was, I, I actually cared about this thing. I don't even know, I don't even think about this thing anymore, let alone care about it." Um, and I think that's good, but a lot of the time we don't see how far we've come. And I think if we could, if you were able to plot your consciousness's progression on a graph, I think you would have far more faith in yourself than you do.

   25. PPPolina Pompliano1:06:43

       Hmm. That's why I think that writing in public on the internet is so powerful, because it's like a public ledger of everything you've been through. Um, I recently did this exercise where I went on Tiny Letter, where, uh, The Profile used to be hosted on Tiny Letter, and I don't know how to... Like, it's there forever. I don't know how to shut it down. I don't even know how to log into my account. But whatever, I'm glad it's there. But if you look at the very early iterations of The Profile in 2017, because I know myself, (laughs) I was reading it in the tone and the jokes that I was making, and like the things I was trying to cover up, um, for insecurities that I had. It was so painfully obvious now. And I'm like, "Oh my God. Like, I, I really did feel like that back then." And I didn't have a ton of confidence in my own voice and, and as a writer, so I was trying to imitate what I thought was being cool on the internet. And I would make jokes that like aren't even funny or that I now do not find funny, but I was trying to sound like, you know, you remember like the blogger, like I'm cool, like I make fun of things and I'm super sarcastic. It, it's not me. And I was trying to imitate somebody else. And so looking back now, I'm like, "Thank God. Like, at least I've gained confidence in that area in my life." But it is interesting to look back and be like, "Look at all the progress I've made." And I'm sure in five years I'm gonna look back now and be like, "What the hell were you saying on Chris' podcast?"

   26. CWChris Williamson1:08:13

       (laughs) Yeah, maybe. Maybe. Polina, thank you very much for coming on.

   27. PPPolina Pompliano1:08:18

       Yeah.

   28. CWChris Williamson1:08:18

       This has been awesome, deconstructing some of the, the high performing people's habits. If the listeners want to check out more of your stuff, where should they go?

   29. PPPolina Pompliano1:08:28

       Uh, readtheprofile.com.

   30. CWChris Williamson1:08:31

       Readtheprofile.com.

Episode duration: 1:08:58